UN chief leaves for Geneva to attend meeting on Syria

UNITED NATIONS, June 29 (Xinhua) -- UN Secretary-General Ban Ki- moon is set to travel to Geneva to attend a meeting on the Action Group for Syria on Saturday, UN spokesman Martin Nesirky told reporters here Friday.

"There might be a press conference by the Joint Special Envoy Kofi Annan at around 1 p.m. Geneva time," Nesirky told reporters here at a daily news briefing.

Annan has been working to convene a meeting in Geneva on June 30 with foreign ministers form "countries with influence" to discuss further measures and actions to ensure the implementation of his six-point peace plan.

The foreign ministers from the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, the secretaries-general of the United Nations and Arab League are part of the Action Group to take part in the upcoming international meeting on Syria.

Recent reports reflect the numbers of Syrian refugees to be increasing in the neighboring countries of Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan, and Iraq. To which the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) has requested an estimated 200 million U.S. dollars to provide proper aid.

"As mentioned also, the Syrian Regional Response Plan estimates that the Syrian refugee total will increase to as many as 185,000 people by December 2012," said Nesirky.

Of those figures, an estimated 90,000 are children, according to reports from the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF). Children will be in need of "vaccines, education, and protection services, as well as clean water, and sanitation by December," said Nesirky.

"This is more than triple the initial number of targeted refugee children," he said. "UNICEF says it urgently requires 14.4 million (U.S.) dollars to meet the emergency needs of a growing number of Syrian refugee children and young people."

Meanwhile, the fate of the UN Supervision Mission in Syria ( UNSMIS) is up to the Security Council, noted Nesirky. He noted that UNSMIS continues to visit hospitals "at a lower level due to insecurity, and to best of their abilities given their insecurity, " he said.